More from a very busy week on the Portland arts beat

Third AngleComposer Ye Xiaogang attended Third Angle's "China Music Now" concert, which included four of his works.The Hofesh Shechter Company arrived almost a full week ago (last Wednesday), and Marty Hughley supplied the post-dance commentary. As I was going over my notes at intermission, after "Uprising," I started laughing because for nearly every quality I jotted down, its opposite often appeared in the very next note. So: "frenetic" and "still," "contracted" and "loose," "staccatto" and "flowing," "closed" and "exposed," "aggressive" and "tender." The accent was always on the first of the pair, but its opposite soon showed up. That continued in "In Your Rooms": the first word was "order" and the second word was "chaos," and later there was "ecstatic" and "pinched." Hughley explained the sources for Shechter's work and praised the company, which I would second, and he referred to a "vague air" socio-political "intent," which is definitely there: The world is dangerous, Shechter seems to say, and in protecting ourselves from the danger, we change ourselves in unhappy ways.

Over at Art Scatter, Bob Hicks digs into Third Angle's "China Music Now" concert. The composers selected (including Ye Xiaogang, who was on hand for the concert) all operate in the space between traditional Chinese music and contemporary art music, and I never know which is which. As composer Jia Daqun wrote in the program about Sichuan Opera: "We can find the unique sound effects that remind us of avant-garde music in terms of cluster, micro-tonality, micro-polyphony and a variety of special performing techniques. Such music has already existed in Chinese traditional theatrical music." Each work in the concert was quite dynamic, even the traditional "River Frolic in the Wintry Water" played on the zheng by the virtuosic Haiquiong Deng -- loud and soft, abrupt and languourous, swift and slow (a little like Hefesh Shechter's dances!) -- and that gave them a certain drama. It also made them difficult to play, I suspect, but the Third Angle ensemble, led by Ron Blessinger, attacked each piece confidently and well. Here's James McQuillen's take for The Oregonian.

Portland poet and man about town Art Honeyman died a year ago, and his friends got together on Friday to celebrate his life, as Inara Verzemnieks reports. If you didn't know Honeyman but often found yourself downtown, you probably saw him rolling around in his wheelchair -- he was practically ubiquitous. Verzemnieks' profile of Honeyman in 2005 is the best way to catch up with Honeyman and travels.